All
names, characters, and places are fictional. Any resemblance to real
people—either living or dead—or places is purely coincidental.
Wandering Koala, Kyle, Brent, René, Professor Rufus, Edgar, and
other prominent characters, names, and places are trademarks of Jeff
Thomason. All rights reserved.

The
Video Game Market began with Pong. True, it wasn’t the first game
made, but it was the first to succeed commercially. A man named Allan
Alcorn created it for Atari using ping-pong as his model. The game
was pretty simple. Two bars, one on each side of the screen,
represented paddles. Each player would move his bar up or down to
deflect a small shape representing the ball, which was constantly
moving in a straight line, deflecting off the paddles and walls at
precise angles. The goal was to knock the ball past your opponent’s
paddle, just like in ping-pong. Atari first released Pong as an
arcade game in 1972, and later as a home version sold exclusively
thru Sears for Christmas 1975. It was a big hit and inspired others
to get into the game. (Get it? Get into the game?)